ABSTRACT
Despite the differences in the level of economic development, as well as in the social and political structures of the two countries, the fact that they shared the experiences of late state formation and belated modernisation may shed new light on their similar historical trajectory in the interwar years. Without discounting these significant differences in the economic and social conditions between Italy and Germany, it seems that the ‘late-comers’ theory has provided a better starting point for the understanding of the similar long-term propensity of the two systems
for territorial expansion than the theories of uneven economic or political development.3
